The 8 crucial things your club website must deliver.
By Srishti Singh
Outside of the physical club itself, your website is one of the most valuable assets you have. After all, It can do everything from connect members when they are away from the club to help prospects discover the experience you create.
Successful clubs recognize the advantages a well-engineered and well-equipped website offers. Because of that, they are very thoughtful and deliberate in choosing the solution to help them build their online experience. Those clubs have something else in common as well. They check all the boxes when it comes to the 8 crucial things a club website must deliver. Here is an overview of those.
1 Enticing engagement
First and foremost, your club website should be magnetic. It should present compelling images and offer a narrative that invites visitors into your unique story. That goes for members and prospects.
- Members - they should be reminded of why they joined, and how enchanting the experience of the club can be. This helps increase visits and revenue for the club.
- Prospects - your website is your front porch. For many, it may be the first way they experience your club. That experience should be captivating, moving them to the next step of becoming a member.
Your website solution should make it easy to add the elements that build this experience. That includes video that brings the club to life.
2 Intuitive experience
Great websites feel effortless. The navigation is easy to access and it’s organized in a way that makes it simple for your users to quickly find what they are looking for. The design should also make it easy to understand how to use any of the functionality – whether you are scheduling a tee time or paying a bill. It should all be intuitive.
Additionally, your club website builder should automatically ensure that the exceptional experience translates effortlessly whether your visitors are viewing it on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. This is referred to as a site with responsive design.
3 Usefulness
Your club website needs to be more than a digital brochure. It needs to offer the functionality that your users find invaluable. Here are some of the capabilities you should expect to build into your website:
- Calendar - a complete list of events that refreshes regularly.
- Updates - a place to access the latest news and announcements.
- Reservations - robust capabilities that allow your guest to sign up for an event, look up available tee times and reserve one, make a dining reservation, make a spa appointment, reserve a court, sign up for a class, and more.
- Ecommerce - an online payment option for events, food on the go orders, buying merchandise from the club shop, and paying monthly charges.
- Account management - the capability to review current bills and historical statements, including the ability to drill down into individual charges
A smart website solution will help ensure that your members view your website as a useful tool that helps enhance their club experience.
4 Ease in administering
One of the hallmarks of a great website solution is its ability to make administering the site easy for you and your staff.
The administration functionality should be easy to learn so that multiple team members can make updates. This is an important point. Because empowering your team to make sure the site is constantly up-to-date results in a web presence that feels fresh and vibrant to your visitors. And it mitigates the problem of relying on outside vendors or waiting on the one “web guru” at your club to get to it.
5 Valuable intelligence
A smart website solution will capture all the user behavior on your site and then make it easy to draw insights from that data. This can make your club website an invaluable tool for understanding what is important to your members and prospects.
That kind of intelligence can help you make decisions on how to evolve your website, and even evolve the offering at your club.
6 Powerful marketing
Your site naturally offers real estate where you can promote different aspects of the club. Maybe it's an upcoming event. Or a special in the restaurant.
A great club website solution also integrates seamlessly with your club management software to give you extended marketing capabilities. For example, you can promote an event on the website – also including it in your online calendar and updates. Then you can use the extended marketing functionality to send emails to a segmented list of those that you’ve identified as most likely to be interested in the type of event you are hosting. Additionally, you can send text messages promoting the event to the list as well as an in-app notification delivered through the club smartphone app.
This marketing capability helps you drive sign-ups and can help you improve revenue for the club.
7 Vigilant security
Your website solution should offer you the assurance that your data is secure. That means putting the measures in place to protect that data. And, offering ongoing monitoring to detect and mitigate any suspicious behavior.
8 Always available support
Problems can have an irritating propensity for showing up at inconvenient times. Like after business hours. Or over the weekend. That’s why you need a web solution that delivers support 24/7. 365 days a year. Especially when you consider that non-work hours and weekends may be the times when your members or prospects are more likely to be visiting your site.
Great support ensures that this invaluable extension of your club is available to your users whenever they need it.
If you’d like more information on how to ensure that you have these 8 crucial aspects covered, request a demo of the Northstar system. You’ll discover a website solution that checks all the boxes to capture all the potential your website holds for your club. Request your demo, today.